William Messing (Minnesota)
Recent Progress in the Theory of Displays (d'apres Lau)
Displays were introduced by Thomas Zink in 1997 and furnish
an alternative Dieudonne Theory to both Crystalline Dieudonne Theory and
Cartier's theory via Typical Curves. They are much more elementary
objects living entirely in the realm of linear algebra. Using displays
one can give a classification of p-divisible formal groups. There is a
variant definition of a Dieudonne display which allows one to classify
p-divisible groups over complete local rings provided the residue
characteristic is > 2. I will introduce displays (and Dieudonne
displays) and discuss recent progress in the theory.